


Carved Upon Whalebone

by WedoMorrison (metalwurm)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Good times, LOTS of violence, M/M, Not exactly self-harm but uh, Other, Reaper76 Week, Reaper76 Week 2017, Self-Injury for the Wellbeing of Another Character, brief and vague references to animal death, did someone say SAD SONG LYRICS, lots of blood, lots of gore, stubborn old gay grandpas being stubborn and gay, techno horror, uh the good ol' soul being cannibalism question is once again relevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 18:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9397637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalwurm/pseuds/WedoMorrison
Summary: Even if the sky must fall, even if they take us all;There's no pain that I won't go through, even if I have to die for you—Scrimshaw, whalers carving the bones of the very leviathans they had slaughtered. Just why such an antiquated word bubbled into his mind at that moment was lost on him but he couldn't help but find it ironic, or at least morbidly fitting. If anything remained of him after Reyes was done with him, he supposed his final act would be carved into his bones like the great whales, a last act of defiance from a dying creature scrawled across glistening bone, as he plunged his knife into his own chest.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I got my _Vessels_ ablum from Starset a day early due to a shipping mixup and WHOA NELLY there were some songs on there that were so Reaper76 I had to call my husband and scream. So, here's my humble ~~and probably only sobs~~ offering for Reaper76 week 2017! Please mind the warnings so to avoid any accidental triggers or squicks! This isn't affiliated with the Golden Grain and Bird Bone fics, so don't worry, no prior knowledge of my fics are needed, nor are these spoilers for any completed or in-progress fics for the series!
> 
> For Reaper76 week day 5: "Over the Airways" Music/Voice
> 
> The songs that inspired this are [Frequency](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrGiHm-iMrM) and [Die For You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJxSNbAer9M) by Starset, off their new album Vessels which releases 1-20-17

_I can't see but I'll follow you, even if I die—_  
_...  
_ _I fed my soul to you but all I got was static—_

"Reaper?"

There wasn't a response, and unease prickled at the back of Jack's neck like a chill. The gunfire had died down, the hallway filled with thinning gunsmoke and the acrid scent of burnt plasma and black powder. He could smell it through the cracks in his mask, where one of the Talon agents had cracked a lucky shot off his face and sent him reeling. He'd had no choice but to use the tactical program to finish them all off; the strain had been too much on both himself and the visor, as it'd blinked off with a fizzle of overheated circuitry while his mostly-sightless eyes stung with overloaded nerves. He was fairly certain the liquid dripping from his eyes behind the spiderwebbed red glass wasn't tears but blood from ruptured vessels. It was just another injury as far as he was concerned, one to add to the growing list he was tallying up as he stopped and actually assessed himself in the lull of combat.

He'd been shot at least six times, one of them high in his chest; it'd hit his lung, if the sharp, stinging pain that jolted up his nerves when he breathed was any indicator. Another had struck his knee, three on his hip and lower abdomen, and one in his shoulder. He wasn't going to be able to walk and without his visor he couldn't see to navigate the cluttered corridors, but none of that mattered unless he could find where Gabe had fallen. He'd seen it, before his visor had been shattered, but trying to get his bearings without sight was difficult at best. His comm had blown out with the visor's power source, and without it he couldn't call in backup or raise anyone. He and Gabe were well and truly on their own in hostile territory.

"... Reyes?" again, no answer; the hall was as deathly silent as a crypt. He dropped his pulse rifle with a loud clatter as he slid fully to the floor, the weapon no use without his sight and standing a needless waste of energy in his state. His breathing was wet and labored, the tacky warmth of blood in his chest a grim reminder of his faltering condition. He wasn't going to last long like this, and as if the universe was spitting in his face, his biotic canisters had been knocked off of his clip by an earlier flashbang that he'd taken to the chest. A piece of shrapnel from it going off was digging its way deeper into his stomach with every movement he made; it'd cut its way into something vital soon. 

Jack groaned and pressed his palm against the worst bullet wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. It pulsed against his palm and leaked through his fingers, drawing a whispered curse from the old soldier. _Artery, or maybe the heart_. He went to pull his leg up into a more comfortable position but found it held fast by something, and when he gave it a gentle tug did he recognize what it was. Cold vines crept around his ankle and up his leg, the buzzing sensation of their touch confirming to him that it was some artifact of Reaper's nanotech. He reached out with his free hand, patting clumsily at the floor around him in an attempt to find where it was coming from, hoping it'd lead him to the rest of the body.

"Gabe? Gabe, are you there?" his voice was so weak and hoarse that he barely recognized it as his own, but this time he got a response. A low, humming snap of sound, electricity crackling through water, answered him, a heavy, wet sense of cold swamping his arm like tar. Jack realized with a pang of fear that Gabe's form had dissolved from exhaustion. He wouldn't be able to get out, and he wouldn't be able to help him out. With the comms down they couldn't call for help, and to compound their situation from dangerous to certainly fatal, Jack realized the scent of the smoke wasn't dissipating, but growing stronger. Talon had set the base on fire, to torch the evidence and scrub away the bodies left behind. Bodies like him, and Gabe.

The cold pooling around him was soothing, even though it sent the animal part of his brain into hackles and fits. He'd grown so used to Gabe's constant, predatory presence and his new body while his reptilian hindbrain still flagged him as a dangerous threat. It wasn't incorrect, of course, Jack had just learned to tune out his own instincts, for better or worse. He felt Gabe envelop his legs and start to creep up his hips but come to a halt, finding the bullet wounds. The hesitation was palpable. A heavy feeling of dread and alarm settled in Jack's stomach when he realized Gabe likely wasn't reforming due to being too weak to, and that there was no way they'd be able to escape with them both in such sorry states. There was no way he'd be able to get them both out without several uses of the biotic canisters, but there was a way for Reyes to get out, even if it meant certain death for him.

"... you're not gonna like this, Gabriel," Jack mumbled a bit, fumbling to flip open the button-latch over the combat knife strapped to his leg, "but I can't get out of this mess, while you _can_." The handle of the knife was slippery with his own blood and he struggled to get a proper grip on it. Gabe's presence was unwavered for a few seconds before erupting in a hissing, buzzing swarm of discontent, tendrils of black snapping up to restrain his arm in an iron grip. A garbled, roaring voice snarled at him, a sound that could barely be called human, unintelligible but no doubt a protest against his course of action. Jack ignored him.

Scrimshaw, whalers carving the bones of the very leviathans they had slaughtered. Just why such an antiquated word bubbled into his mind at that moment was lost on him but he couldn't help but find it ironic, or at least morbidly fitting. If anything remained after Reyes was done with him, he supposed his final act would be carved into his bones like the great whales, a last act of defiance from a dying creature scrawled across glistening bone, as he plunged his knife into his own chest.

_**JACK** _

The blade sank neatly between his fourth rib, precisely where he'd aimed. He barely heard his name over the sharp, piercing pain of the wound, the air sputtering out of his lungs with a whine. When he inhaled he felt his lungs flex and then tear against the blade still embedded in his torso, a swallowed cry of agony dying in his throat. Gabe was howling with the voice of a hurricane, his sticky, cold touch surrounding him, pressed all against him and vibrating with urgency. Jack didn't think he could respond even if he wanted to, blood flooding his throat and dribbling past the broken remains of his mask, dark and swirled with Gabe's own essence as he flooded his body through the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

_Quit trying to stop it, damnit. Take what you need and get out of here before its too late_

Maybe if he thought it hard enough Gabriel would hear him. He hoped he could hear him. Maybe he was screaming it, or maybe it was only in his mind. Everything was quick to go fuzzy around the edges, his own body alien and far away; he couldn't feel the tendrils of black oil probing his face or rubbing frantically at his chest, trying to restart his heart. He never realized it'd stopped, but he supposed dying had a strange way of meddling with one's perception of time.

Rough, grating pain spread across his body, the nanites beginning to pick apart his body at a cellular level when his vitals dipped low enough they didn't see him as living, but as a source of nourishment. It hurt in a way so deep and primal that no word he knew could describe, flesh and bone and organs dissolved into the raw biomass the nanites needed to piece Reyes back together. Fitting, perhaps, consumed to provide him another chance at life after his own mistakes had killed him in the first place. He hoped he was enough, that it wasn't all for nothing, as he gurgled out his last breath that was more blood and black tar than air. Jack's thoughts were fragmentary and sluggish, senses dimming out one at a time, until even Reaper's desperate wailing went quiet.

A liquid pressure blossomed behind his ribs, swelling and seeping into every fiber of his being and somehow reaching _further_ , the roots of Gabriel's hunger clutching at something incorporeal and precious. Feather-light touches, revenant and gentling, entwined with the last part of him that had any semblance of feeling. Jack's sleepy half-awareness couldn't understand it, only twisting with a clumsy confusion as the shadowy tendrils bore into his not-being, flashes of sight and sound from eyes and ears not his own flickering through his consciousness. Shattered red glass and dark crimson blood spattered across rough concrete, the pulse rifle bubbling and hissing as fire cracked it apart, a shred of blue fabric over gnawed, knife-scored bone, glittering flames licking at his—not his—black-clad arms. The pieces of sensory input rattled hollowly inside his weak understanding, exhaustion and a hovering sense of loss muddying his perception. _Sleep_ , something whispered to him, _sleep. You're safe. Sleep. I'm here_. He let himself drift off, cradled delicately as a bird's egg in a nest of black thorns and branches.

_I can feel your soul fade, I can feel your heart change_  
_It falls out of phase with mine—_  
_..._  
_I've lost your frequency_


End file.
